He flipped his credentials wallet. “Agents Roarke and Epps, San Francisco Bureau. Inspector Mills said you might be able to help us.”
“Mills,” she said, in the amused, exasperated voice so many people seemed to take on whenever Mills was mentioned.
“Yeah,” Roarke said. “Mills.”
She pushed open the door behind her and they followed her into a round office with a huge battered desk, built-in bookcases, a worn loveseat. There was an inner door and Roarke got a glimpse of a small side room with a single bed that hinted at frequent night shifts.
Elliott sat behind the desk, and Roarke got to the point. “We’re looking for a prostitute.”
Her eyes and voice turned to ice. “They’re not prostitutes,” she said. “They’re sexually abused and commercially exploited youth.”
Roarke had to bite back an angry reply. The endless political correctness of the Bay Area could work anyone’s last nerve, even though she was right, and he knew she was right. It was a Bay Area epidemic. Since the crackdown on the street drug trade gangs and dealers had shifted their focus from crack to the much safer and more lucrative business of selling children for sex.
“Of course they are,” he said. But he could hear the grating irritation in his own voice and naturally Rachel Elliott mistook his sleeplessness for mockery. She didn’t waste a second jumping all over him.
“You people should know that Federal law recognizes recruiting minors for prostitution as human trafficking—”
“We’re all on the same side, here,” Epps interjected, the classic conciliator, but Elliott turned on him, clearly unmoved and ready to tell him exactly why. Roarke spoke quickly to deflect another outburst.
“Are you familiar with a Danny Ramirez?”
A look of sheer loathing crossed Elliott’s face. “Jesus. Ramirez. What now?”
“Someone killed him last night.”
She looked startled, but quickly covered it. “And what, I’m supposed to be sorry? He was the worst kind of scum.”
And how often have I heard someone say that about one of Cara’s… projects
?
“You’re not supposed to be anything,” he said evenly. “We’re looking for one of his girls.”
Now her eyes were wary. “You think one of them killed him?”
“We think one of them saw who did.”
She half-laughed. “And you think any one of them is going to talk — no —
testify
against a dealer or pimp? Good luck with that.”
Roarke suppressed a sigh. “We’d be grateful if you could just steer us in the right direction.”
She stared at him for a long moment and he braced himself for a political diatribe. Instead she surprised him.
“He’s got six that I know of. That’s a full stable for one of these guys. Five or six teenagers and they can make six hundred grand a year, the bastards. Danny is – was - a real Romeo, had a whole Russell Brand look going on.”
“You know his girls, then? We really need to talk to them.”
She gave Roarke a quick, assessing glance.
“They’ll run if they see you two coming,” she said automatically, and then hesitated. “I’ll go out tonight and try to talk them into coming to the house. If Ramirez is dead this is my best shot to move them off the street before some other slimebag gets hold of them. If it’s not too late.” She flicked another glance at Roarke. “If I can get them here, I’ll ask them to talk to you.”
Surprise and sleeplessness caught him off-guard and he could only stare at her for a moment. Epps jumped in quickly. “We would seriously appreciate that, Ms. Elliott.”
Roarke muttered agreement.
Now Rachel Elliott seemed to be avoiding Roarke’s eyes. “If you can lock another one of the bastards away, I’m too happy to help.” He realized she’d jumped to the logical conclusion that Ramirez had been killed by another pimp. No way was he going to complicate the issue by correcting that impression.
Epps was already handing her a card. “If there’s anything you need from us, don’t hesitate to call. We’ll be waiting.”
She took the card without enthusiasm. “I can’t promise anything.”
“We know that,” Epps assured her. “Anything at all would help.”
Roarke fished out one of his own cards. As he handed it to her, he said, “Be safe,” surprising himself.
She looked up at him quickly, and Roarke saw her cheeks flush, an involuntary reaction which was instantly uncomfortable for him. She half-laughed. “On the street, you mean? It’s my job, Agent Roarke,” she said, her voice taut again.
But their eyes held for a beat before Roarke turned away.
As the door shut behind them and the agents walked down the stairs to the street, Roarke caught Epps giving him a sideways glance.
“What?” Roarke snapped.
“Nothing,” Epps said. “Nothin’ at all, no.” And continued under his breath, something that sounded suspiciously like, “Your picker is broken.”
Roarke felt a wave of anger all out of proportion to the circumstance. Yes, Rachel Elliott was attractive. In the normal world, normal people met other normal people and followed up on normal human connections, didn’t they? Wasn’t that what it was supposed to be like?
He was too tired to think. So he pretended he hadn’t heard.
The whole last twenty-four hours suddenly hit like a tidal wave crashing over him. The massacre. The whole surreal question of the Reaper. Reynolds’ ultimatum. The sight of the pimp’s body in the tunnel. There was no sense to any of it.
“I’ve got to go home,” he told Epps. “Sleep.”
“I’m with you on that,” Epps said, and to Roarke’s annoyance he added, “I’ll drop you there.”
Still worried Cara would hurt him.
A killer of pimps, child abusers, bombers, and you think she’d kill me? Dream on, pal o’ mine. Dream on
.
***
Roarke had just stepped through the doorway of his flat when his phone buzzed. He shoved his hand in his pocket to fish out the phone, and his pulse quickened to see Snyder’s name on the screen. Roarke had left a message and forwarded Singh’s scanned files on the Leland killings the night before.
He punched “on.”
“Are you in Reno?” Synder’s voice asked him.
“Back home. I take it you got the files.”
“I did.”
Roarke sat on the couch and ran a hand through his hair. “Is it the Reaper?” An unanswerable question, but he knew Snyder would know what he meant.
The profiler answered slowly. “The use of a knife as a murder weapon, the violent stabbing and slashing, the nuclear family unit… these are unique crimes. There are zero instances of copycats in sexual homicide; the gratification in these crimes is specific to the perpetrator.” Snyder paused, and Roarke could picture him shaking his head. “Statistically it’s almost impossible it could be someone else.”
“And the coincidence?”
“The coincidence is extreme. And worrisome.”
Roarke sat quietly, feeling the buzzing in his head. Then Snyder spoke again. “Let’s put that aside and look at the history for a moment. Familicide is almost
always
perpetrated by a parent, almost always the father, killing the family unit. It is extremely rare for a family to be killed by an outside perpetrator, and such cases are almost always home invasions. A serial killer who targets whole families is almost unheard of. Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, killed two families; Richard Trenton Chase, the Vampire Killer, killed a family. But the consistency of this particular killer, the Reaper, striking nuclear families, the M.O. — was very precise, and it was unprecedented.”
Roarke followed his words with a sick feeling, though he knew it, had known it in his gut as well as in his head.
“But with the Reno killings, you’ve found no clear evidence it was an outside perpetrator rather than a murder/suicide by the father?”
“Not yet,” Roarke said tightly. “I’ve been instructed to drop this line of inquiry.”
“I see.” There was a long pause. “I’m not entirely sorry.”
Roarke was startled, and then angry. “I don’t follow. What am I supposed to do, wait until he kills again? Because if this is the Reaper, he damn well is going to kill again.”
“Yes,” Snyder said, and there was a heaviness in his voice. “No doubt.”
Roarke half-laughed. “Oh yes, and Cara Lindstrom killed a pimp in Golden Gate Park last night. Her usual M.O.”
“I see. You do have your hands full.”
“I’ll send you the files.”
Again, a pause. “Thank you. And what are you going to do?”
Roarke dropped his head back on the back of the couch. “I’m going to get some sleep before I pass out. I’ll call you in the morning.”
Chapter Twenty-one
He is in the tunnel, with cold, mossy stones around him. The dark is paralyzing, he can’t see, can’t move… but he can smell rancid copper, the pimp’s blood, even feel it in the air.
Behind him Epps’ voice speaks in his ear.
This is who she is. This is what she does
.
A shadow looms on the wall at the end of the tunnel, waiting…
And a buzzing starts, loud, alarming….
He was not in the tunnel. He was in bed, and his phone was vibrating on the bedstand. He reached for it groggily, saw an unfamiliar local number. “Roarke,” he muttered into the phone through a dry mouth.
“Agent Roarke.”
It was a woman’s voice and for a split second he was flooded with adrenaline, but almost as instantly he knew it was not Cara. It was a voice he should have recognized, husky and feminine, but he couldn’t quite get to it.
“This is Rachel Elliott.” And after a pause, she added, “From the Belvedere House.”
He sat up, his brain connecting. “Hello,” he started, and grabbed for the travel clock on his bed stand. 7:30 a.m. He’d slept fourteen hours. “Sorry, I must have—”
She was speaking, barreling over him. “I know it’s early, I probably shouldn’t have—”
They both stopped and it was an awkward and loaded silence, and then she started again.
“Mills was just here. He showed me a police sketch of a woman…”
Roarke went still.
“I saw her. In the Haight. She was with one of Danny Ramirez’s girls.”
Rachel Elliott was waiting inside the People’s Café, a Haight Ashbury institution. She was seated at a table behind the big plate-glass window, and gave Roarke a direct look through the glass, a look he felt in his groin. He stifled a wave of something like irritation as he pulled open the door. The overwhelming fragrance of coffee and buttery pastry hit him. The café had the look of a tavern, a high counter that was clearly once a bar, ceiling fans, a pressed tin ceiling. Summer of Love posters adorned the walls: Jefferson Airplane, Wavy Gravy.
He joined Elliott at the table. She looked fresh and clean, light years better than he felt, and she had two giant mugs of coffee in front of her. As he sat across from her she pushed one toward him. “It’s black,” she said, and blushed faintly, giving herself away.
Rachel Elliott, your picker is broken
, he thought, and drank from the mug.
As if to avoid his unspoken thought, she busied herself with her own coffee. “So I think I know the girl you’re looking for. I should have known from the start, probably. She calls herself Jade. She’s a new one, not completely destroyed yet. It doesn’t take long, though.”
She shook her head, shaking it off, and looked at him directly. “The thing is, I saw this woman you’re looking for with her, two days ago.”
Roarke slid the police sketch of Cara out of his leather binder and put it down on the table between them. “You’re sure.”
Rachel glanced down at the image. “Positive. I’m not sure why I noticed them, honestly, there was just something — odd.”
“Where was this? What happened?” he asked, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.
“There.” She nodded to the sidewalk outside. “Across the street, in front of the Lotus Flower.” He turned to the window beside him to look; there was an Asian restaurant across the street, painted sage green with red trim and a huge pink blossom over its large plate glass window. “I walk down here for lunch most days, or just to get out. I was sitting just about here, and I could see Jade sitting on the curb — she looked as if she’d collapsed there. I was thinking I would go out to see if she was all right, try to talk to her, and just then that woman in your sketch came out of the restaurant and put a to-go box down beside her.”
Unmistakably Cara
, he thought. He looked down at the sketch. Underneath the glass top of the table was a shallow box frame filled with coffee beans. It made him feel more caffeinated.
“Did she say anything to her?” he asked aloud. “Did they speak?”
“They didn’t, but…” she hesitated.
“What?” he said, too sharply.
She spoke slowly. “They
looked
at each other. I mean, like they knew each other.” She shook her head slightly. “I thought, anyway.”
“And then what?”
She nodded down toward the sketch of Cara. “She turned and walked away.”
Roarke tried to keep the urgency out of his voice. “Did you see where she went, a car, a house…”
Rachel shook her head. “Just walked on down the street. I don’t know where she was headed.”
“How was she was dressed?”
The counselor frowned. “Well… young, I thought. Jeans and a hoodie, high tops. You could have taken her for a teenager, if you weren’t really looking. But the way she approached Jade — so focused — she didn’t move like a kid.”
No. Not a kid
.
She was studying him. “Does this woman have something to do with Ramirez?”
Roarke didn’t answer her. Cara stared up from the sketch on the table between them, eyes hidden behind shades. He wanted to put the sketch away, but the action would call attention to itself, so he left her there.
“You have any idea where to find this Jade?” he asked brusquely.
Rachel looked flustered. “I would have said Danny’s crash pad, one of them, anyway, but… not if she saw him killed.”
Exactly what Roarke had been thinking. At the counter behind them the cappuccino steamer hissed.
Rachel continued. “I’ve been looking for her, but no luck so far, I’m afraid. Not last night, not today. She’s probably hiding out, but I have no idea where.”